How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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where parents succeed completely in imposing their authority on him, one of those helpless robots whose sole use to society lies in his ability to take orders and carry them out without questioning. In the days of kaiserism they made good cannon-fodder, and in these days of economic imperialism they make good drudges for factory and field. Nagging by parents is the very best training school for pedants, compulsion neurotics, religious fanatics, and fussy faddists of one variety or another. The tragic influence of vanity and great expectations on the part of parents is usually felt very early by the child. Vain mothers and great fathers seldom have adequate children. The weight of the family tradition usually is too much for the child to bear. Often these children protect themselves by appearing stupid, in order to escape the ambitious spurs of their parents’ vanity. Or they fly into the enemy’s camp, and develop in a direction exactly contrary to their parents’ wishes. This is the reason so many doctors’ children are hypo¬ chondriacs, why the children of clergymen are often immoral, and why the children of lawyers become crooks. Emotional astigmatism is a contagious disease, and a single, emotionally warped parent is usually quite capable of infecting an entire family with the virus of neurosis. Because there are so few really well-balanced parents, the emotional factors we have outlined in this section play a tremendous r6le in the discouragement and intimidation of the child. The prototype of human failures is to be found in the childhood situation of the home. The protests, the evasions, the retreats of later life may be demonstrated in the child’s crystalline pattern of life. It is for this reason .that mental hygienists insist on the necessity of child guidance clinics in every school. While there is no substitute for the emotional environment of a happy home, a good school community is a thousand times preferable to the warped emotionalism prevailing in many homes. It is our own belief that the common neuroses of western civilization exact a far heavier toll of human